Advaita and the Gita

[Sankaran Kartik Jayanarayanan]

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Stephanie Stean wrote:

> Jaldhar:
>
> Could you please explain to me what you mean by:
>
>  >Note, of those three only the middle one was an Advaita Vedantin.
>
> I'm new with the terms and want to make sure I understand what you mean?
>
> Thanks
>
> >>          Three other interpretations of the Gita which you may find useful
> >> are by Abhinavagupta, Madhusudana Sarasvati and Sri Aurobindo.
> >

Abhinavagupta was a proponent of Kashmir Shaivism, which though being
essentially non-dualistic (it teaches the eternal unity of Shiva and the
individual soul) is not really part of the advaita Vedanta tradition of
Shankara, which is what this list is all about. Moreover, there are some
important differences between the two, e.g. Kashmir Shaivism believes in
the reality of the world, which advaita Vedanta denies. You may want to
visit http://www.kashmirshaivism.org/ to learn more about it.

Aurobindo has specifically said that his philosophy is not non-dualism, in
fact he is *against* non-dualism.

Madhusudana Saraswati (the middle name among the three listed) was a
16th-century Vedantin of the advaita tradition, and he wrote the famous
"advaita siddhi" that was translated and explained in this list by Anand
Hudli.